Swedish trail runner (living in Norway) Emelie Forsberg finished third at the Zegama-Aizkorri Marathon three weeks after her second place finish at the Three Peaks race in the UK. Find out more about this up-and-coming trail running talent in the following interview.

Emelie Forsberg Post-2012 Zegama Marathon Interview Transcript

iRunFar: Bryon Powell here with iRunFar here with Emelie Forsberg (Salomon) at the Zegama Marathon after her 3rd place finish. The US audience probably doesn’t know you so well. Tell us where you live and where you’re from.

Emelie Forsberg: I’m from Sweden, but I live in Norway in Tromso. It’s very far up north above the Arctic Circle.

iRF: Are you used to bad weather living there?

Forsberg: No, we actually have quite good weather there, but we have a lot of snow. I just went from skiing to running.

iRF: Do you Nordic ski or ski-mountaineer?

Forsberg: Both Nordic skiing and cross-country.

iRF: Do you specialize in one or the other?

Forsberg: No, I like to do everything.

iRF: Well, you had a lot of everything today. There was some uphill, some downhill, and slick and technical terrain also.

Forsberg: I love downhill and I found every downhill so fun.

iRF: Before the race I was told that some people have never seen a woman descend as quickly as you. If you were close in that last 11km, they said you’d make up some time.

Forsberg: I was a bit tired that last part. I went out too fast.

iRF: Is this toward the longer end of your racing range?

Forsberg: Yes. Especially because in winter I don’t run, I just ski. So this is a long race in the beginning of the season, but I love long races.

iRF: You ran the 3 Peaks Race (UK) a few weeks ago. How did that go?

Forsberg: Yes. I came in second.

iRF: What exciting plans do you have for this year?

Forsberg: I need to talk to Greg Vollet [the Salomon team manager] again because I want to do a race, maybe Snowdon Peak in the UK, and Giir di Mont in Italy, and then we’ll see.

iRF: So that would put you in the Skyrunner World Series…

Forsberg: Yeah! I’d like to do that!

iRF: Well, you’ve put yourself in a good position with your run today. Congratulations and we hope to hear of a lot of good results from you this year!

Being from a part-Scandinavian family I'm biased toward rooting for her :)

While Ellie G and Anna F have made a splash on the US scene, I hope more international/non-English-speaking women make the jump to run big US races. It seems like there are a fair number of strong French, Spanish and Italian mountain runners and the Japanese women have always excelled at long flatter ultras. Part of this has to be strategic on the part of the sponsors. I'm sure in 5 years this will have equaled out of bit.